A Sound of Sheer Silence

Well, it's over.  Everyone has gone home, and the pundits--amateur and professional--now get to dissect what has happened and What It All Means.   I continue to maintain that we should not be distracted by the shiny object that is the final document produced by the Synod, and instead focus on whatever Pope Francis ultimately says or does with regard to divorced and remarried Catholics.  Still, I think that the Synod made a number of advances from a process standpoint, even if the product that was generated is not as important as it might seem.  And, inspired by Cardinal Marx's impressive use of Shakespeare to make his points , I too will draw from the The Bard. "This above all- to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."   Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3.   With the possible exception of the handful of heads of religious orders, everyone who attended the Synod of Bishops was put into a high offic...

"Don't do it," I hear you telling me.  "You don't want to be That Guy," you wisely suggest.  " Everyone  has praised the Pope's new encyclical.  The only people who have a problem with Laudato Si' are Republican Presidential candidates and Rorate-Caeli  readers .  Do you want to be lumped in with that lot?" You're right, you're right.  I shouldn't do it. But. . . I have ambivalent feelings about  Laudato Si'.   I'm not sure if this encyclical will, in the long run, be a good thing for the Catholic Church.  In fact, I think the encyclical is, in some dimensions, a step backward.  There, I said it. Let's talk first about the substance of the encyclical, and then move to my bigger concern, which is the philosophical and ecclesiastical vision that informs the way the encyclical approaches and presents that substance. On the substance, everyone is focusing on climate change part, where he says that human activity ...

Happy Environmental Encyclical Day !  Or, as it is known in some circles, liberal Catholic Schadenfreude Day.  I recognize that I should probably take a measured tone and not rejoice in watching our conservative and traditionalist brothers and sisters squirm.  And I think with this post I have succeeded.  Sort of. You will hear in the days to come the word "cafeteria Catholic" thrown around, and perhaps you are not familiar with that term.  Well, the ever-zealous folks at Catholic Answers  say "[a] cafeteria Catholic is typically defined as one who picks and chooses what Catholic teaching he wants to believe. Catholics are not free to choose which teachings (on faith and morals) to obey."  Hmm, interesting. Sounds like some folks are bellying up to the cafeteria line, as can be seen here and here and of course here . As a frequent and long-term diner at the cafeteria, I would point out that there are two kinds of folks that are grouped into th...

I mentioned this in passing in yesterday's post , but it bears a closer look.  The Catholic Church is Germany is putting down its marker in preparation for the October Synod on the Family, along several dimensions.  First, this week, it approve changes to its internal labor guidelines, clarifying the status of people in non-canonically recognized relationships, either straight or gay.   A rough translation of the press release : The renewed civil marriage after a civil divorce is to be seen as a serious loyalty violation [and thus cause to be fired]  if that behavior on the specific circumstances is objectively likely to attract a significant nuisance in the service community or the professional sphere of activity and affect the credibility of the Church. The same applies to entering into a registered partnership [i.e. a recognized same-sex union] . These actions thus must be considered under the circumstances and therefore only in exceptional cases are rel...

Yesterday, Notre Dame hosted a conference entitled "Polarization in the U.S. Catholic Church: Naming the Wounds, Beginning to Heal."   A number of folks have been heavily promoting this event, including Professor Camosy of "Beyond the Abortion Wars" fame (who appears to be one of the main organizers of the event).  [Personal Note: Fr. Ken Simpson, who was the priest in-charge of the Newman Center at Northwestern when I was there, and who is a wonderful, wonderful priest and person, is also on the panel].   I missed the live-stream, but hopefully the recorded version will be available soon.    [Edit:   Here it is ].   As I haven't seen it, I can't comment yet on the specific content of talks, but here are a few general thoughts on the topic of polarization. First, the reaction to the conference from certain folks on the left-hand side of the Catholic aisle has been cynical and dismissive.  I understand the sentiment behind it ("where was the conc...

There was a small, seemingly technical element, buried within Pope Francis's announcement of the Jubilee Year of Mercy  that caught my eye.  Paragraph 18 says: During Lent of this Holy Year, I intend to send out Missionaries of Mercy. They will be a sign of the Church’s maternal solicitude for the People of God, enabling them to enter the profound richness of this mystery so fundamental to the faith. There will be priests to whom I will grant the authority to pardon even those sins reserved to the Holy See, so that the breadth of their mandate as confessors will be even clearer.    There are not a large number of these so-called "reserved" sins, and the vast majority of them involve actions by clergy--ordaining folks without Vatican approval, grave abuses of the Confessional (like a priest conspiring with someone to commit some act and then absolving the accomplice of that act), profaning the Eucharist, etc.  Though, it is worth noting that the hard-right Tr...

The Catholic Church is the place I believe I belong, for reasons that are often hard to articulate .  But that doesn't mean that it is, or is going to be, smooth sailing.  You can talk about specific points of disagreement, but I think those points of disagreement are all the product of something more fundamental.  And it was in rereading Elizabeth Bruenig's piece on Pope Francis that this underlying issue started to become clear to me.   I've talked before about Ross Douthat's commentary on some of Bruenig's claims , but Douthat's complaints don't touch on the really explosive core of Bruenig's piece, which is her discussion of the past. My review of A Defence of War , which I presented to John some time later, focused on the role of property in conflict. This seemed a stretch, but I couldn’t think of any other way of doing it. He took his time reading my paper, settled, as he often did, in a high-backed chair near an empty fireplace in his office. Hi...

If you asked ten people on the street whether the word "mercy" has a positive or negative connotation, I suspect you would get either nine or ten votes for "positive."  You would think that if you changed venues from the street to the inside of a Catholic church on Sunday, you would be guaranteed ten out of ten positive votes.  After all, "Blessed are the merciful," the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy , etc.  You would think. On the other hand, judging from the comments sections of Catholic publications, you might think again.  A few weeks ago, Pope Francis announced a Jubilee "Year of Mercy."  Again, you would think this rank up there with being in favor of Mom and apple pie on the non-controversial scale, but there is a dedicated segment of people that are against the idea of expanding or widening or broadening or whatever the mercy of the Church (or, more accurately, the mercy of God as communicated by the Church).  The concern, these...

I have no idea if Juan Barros Madrid, the newly installed bishop of Osorno, Chile, is a good priest or not.  I have no idea if Bishop Barros has been a good bishop in his previous job as the bishop for the Chilean military.  Most importantly, I have no idea whether Bishop Barros knew about the sexual abuse of minors by Father Fernando Karadima.  The Vatican says that he did not, that there are no "objective reasons" to keep him from being named Bishop of Osorno .  Maybe he truly didn't know anything about the abuse.  Maybe, like many, he chose not to ask questions where we was unprepared for the answers.  Maybe he knew everything.  I truly have no idea. Here is what I know.  The people in Chile, at least a big swath of them, believe that Bishop Barros should not be their bishop.  So much so that they tried to physically prevent him from entering the cathedral to assume his new job. Whether or not there is any "objective" evidence of Bi...

Pope Francis memorably called upon people to "make a mess" in the Catholic Church.  If you would like to see what a "mess" looks like, San Francisco would be a good place to start. As most people know, San Francisco is maybe the most progressive city in the United States.  What few know is that San Francisco has a strong and diverse Catholic presence and Catholic identity.  Now, because of the first part the Catholic identity tends to be on the progressive side, but nevertheless the Catholic Church is a significant, visible presence in the city.  The current Archbishop of San Francisco, Salvatore Cordileone, is a serious culture warrior-- in fact, he is the point man for the efforts of the U.S. bishops to oppose gay marriage .  His selection by then Pope Benedict was seen, and it is hard to argue with this, as a bit of stick in the eye of the city that has always been at the forefront of gay rights issues since the 1970s.  It was basically inevitable that...

A shade over 35 years ago, Archbishop Oscar Romero, the Archbishop San Salvador, El Salvador, was assassinated by government-backed gunmen while he was in the middle of saying Mass.  There was no dispute regarding the motive behind the killing--Romero was outspoken in his opposition to the government on the side of the poor.  He was, like many of his generation among the Latin American clergy, a leftist, a proponent of liberation theology.  Was he a Marxist?  Not really.  As his contemporary, Dom Helder Camara of Recife, Brazil, famously said "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist." [Ed. note: I butchered the quote in a previous version.  My mistake.  BTW, Dom Camara may be on his way to sainthood as well ]. In a couple of months, Oscar Romero will be beatified, the "level below," if you will, being named a saint.  No one seriously doubts that he will be canonized is due cour...

Martin O'Malley, the former governor of Maryland, wants to run for President of the United States.  In doing so, he is going to be asked about gay marriage.  But, Governor O'Malley has a problem--he's a Catholic.  So, he is going to be asked about how the Catholic position of the question impacts his own views. He gives a typically political, mealy-mouthed answer .  And, equally typically, he gets slammed for it by people like Deacon Kandra.  Indeed, Kandra cites to some document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which purports to outline obligatory standards for what Catholic politicians should do in the context of the gay marriage debate.  And this document is unambiguous: When legislation in favour of the recognition of homosexual unions is proposed for the first time in a legislative assembly, the Catholic law-maker has a moral duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly and to vote against it. To vote in favour of a law s...